I would caution about hiring the npcs. Since there is a bug (or something) preventing the resetting of monthly npcs you can hire in stations/facilities. Meaning that if all npc's for facility/station have been hired and it is at 0 then you won't be able to hire any. Usually every month they reset to the correct amount that would be hireable but the bug prevents this.

So you might want to plan to take your own npc's and have extras available just in case the npc's on Derra have all been hired out.

I know the Asims announced that you can submit a ticket and request the amount and type of npc's you want and give them the id number of what you want them spawned on and they will spawn the npc's once payment is received.

I did this for builders and they were very accomodating. I had my npc's within an hour or so.